The house has two floors, three including the attic rooms. Or four, including the basement, where the laundry is, and which is only half underground because the ground floor, the piano nobile, is elevated. That’s where the salons are, arranged in a kind of circuit, so that, whatever the time of day, the ample windows of one, at least, can capture the sunlight. Having climbed the twelve steps of the grand stairway to enter the house and walked down a long hallway, one reaches a central lobby, which is the only large space on the ground floor that does not give on to the outside. Yet it is not deprived of daylight, because a spacious arcade connects it with another lobby, of the same dimensions, which opens on to the rear gallery and receives the rays of the sun. These twin spaces cater to different tastes: for light or shade, for gatherings (or solitary meditation) in the cool of the back lobby during summer, with the doors open to the gallery, or in the snug warmth of the central lobby with its fireplace in winter time. The design also allows for choice between large and small spaces, between the majestic and the intimate. To the right of the lobbies, a maze of little rooms, arranged in an arc around the lateral façade, satisfies the taste for intimacy. They could be used as studies or waiting rooms, for storing documents or accommodating extra guests and residents who might prefer to be away from the main bedrooms on the first floor. A large bathroom and two smaller ones service this area. Tucked away among these little rooms are two without any windows, which offer the possibility of complete isolation, should anyone need to withdraw in order to concentrate, or for any another reason. Preferences for large or small spaces are not mutually exclusive: the same person might opt for one or the other in different circumstances and at different hours or moments of the day.
On the other side, to the left of the lobbies, is the grand dining room, twenty yards long, then a little octagonal Chinese room for smaller but still formal meals, and a third dining room, for daily use, with a dumbwaiter going down to the kitchens; but another kitchen is planned for the ground floor, to allow the future owner to choose between two domestic arrangements: one that would suit the relaxed style of a lady who likes to do the cooking herself, and another for the mistress of the house who is happy to let her qualified staff take care of everything. In the first case, the downstairs kitchens could be adapted for some other use, and joined up with the rest of the basement, accessed by a larger staircase: that’s where the billiard room is, along with spaces that could be used as recording studios, darkrooms, or workshops for various hobbies.
The main library, in a prime location — one of the corners on the ground floor — is complemented by a smaller one upstairs, which provides a store of reading material handy to the bedrooms. These range in size from large to small, have views in all directions, and among them, as well as the library, are little salons, galleries, and two small dining rooms, one at either end. There are bedrooms with and without dressing rooms, private sitting rooms, and connecting doors, but each one has a balcony, and those at the ends of each wing have terraces as well.
On the next floor up, a long row of small but comfortable bedrooms, with good ventilation and natural light, for the staff, should they be required to live in, plus little sitting rooms, hallways, bathrooms, and ample storage space. The house is crowned by a circular cupola with a dome and glass walls. The various levels, from the basement to the cupola, are connected by stairways, the grander of which are made of marble with wrought iron and bronze railings, while the humbler are of timber or granite, but all are elaborately designed. Disabilities and weariness must be taken into account, so the priest reserves an empty space for an elevator shaft going right to the top of the building. He wouldn’t hesitate to foot the bill for a state-of-the-art model, but he has second thoughts: the newer the mechanism, the greater the likelihood that a specialized technician would have to be called in if it broke down, which, in a remote region like that, would take time and cost a considerable amount of money. So he opts for an old design, so old it’s almost anachronistic to call it an elevator at all, with a hydraulic mechanism (just like the ones built for Frederick the Great’s palaces in Potsdam in the eighteenth century): it’s primitive but, precisely because of that, ingenious and perfectly functional. The degree of mechanical skill that might be expected of any gardener or chauffeur is quite sufficient to puzzle out its system of pulleys, sheaves, and counterweights. Since it has to be built specially, it turns out to be far more expensive — five times more, in fact — than the latest model; but like all the other expenses, this one is balanced by a future saving.
There’s no need to go into more detail. But that’s what the priest does, plunging into the depths of detail, spending long days in research, reflection, and conversations with the architects. In those sessions, a doubt begins to surface, or not so much a doubt as the intimation of a danger: that of creating a monster. Reality consists of beings and things in which all possibilities but one have already been set aside. In reality, alternatives do not coexist. And what is he doing if not attempting to bring them into coexistence? There are many ways of defining monstrosity, he thinks, but their common feature is the coexistence of possibilities among which a choice should have been made. And the house that he is building conforms to that description frighteningly well. Or it will if he gets his way, if he realizes his project to its full extent and depth, and makes a house that is at once big and small, grand and modest, melancholic and joyful, eastern and western, this and that. . The supposedly ideal house could end up inspiring horror, like some diabolical invention. Satan employs the same weapons, after all, subtly introducing possibilities into the real. .
After a few sleepless nights of fretting over this problem, the priest reassures himself. His doubt becomes transparent and dissolves, like the memory of a nightmare yielding to the onslaught of day. After all, the house will be real, very real (that’s the idea), it will manifest the possibilities he has chosen, and be beautiful and harmonious, insofar as his good taste allows. His doubts will be buried, or rather walled up, by the obduracy of matter.
So the construction of the house begins, and its reality shines like an authentic wonder, or the promise of a wonder, in that poor district where nine out of ten families live crammed in one-room tin shacks, shared not only by the numerous offspring of promiscuity and ignorance, but also by dogs, chickens, and pigs. The locals come to admire, although they don’t really understand, nor do they criticize. Criticism would exceed their intellectual capacities, which have atrophied through lack of use, like their understanding. But even if the purely intellectual distance were overcome, understanding would still be beyond their reach because the project is an act of charity performed for their benefit (although with a delayed effect), so it includes them, it’s a part of them, and understanding it would mean understanding themselves, and, in a way, ceasing to be poor.